Open Hands: How To Respond To God’s Blessings
“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
-Matthew 6:31-33, ESV
In Christian circles, we often talk extensively about trials and how to walk through them by faith. This is the right emphasis, as our lives are filled with various trials. There are numerous books, seminars, and other media to prepare people for suffering in various ways and teach them how to endure any number of trials. But that emphasis can come at the expense of adequately preparing us for blessings. At first we may think such preparation would be unnecessary. After all, who really needs to know how to prepare for good times? But blessings bring temptations that trials do not, so we are wise to prepare for them just as we prepare for trials. In good times, we are tempted to rely on ourselves and neglect God (Proverbs 30:8-9), give into thinking that we deserve these blessings and therefore receive them without thankfulness (1 Corinthians 4:7), and let our guard down and thus leave ourselves susceptible to temptation to sin (2 Samuel 11). I talk more about that last one my leadership paper when describing how successful people are more prone to compromise ethically in good times than hard times. That alone should be enough to cause us to approach good times with caution. Indeed blessings are often a test just like trials—and I would venture to say that more people fail tests of blessing than trials (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25). When facing times of blessing, I want to focus on two opposite but serious temptations we face: claiming for ourselves what God has not given us and stiff-arming them out of fear of disappointment.
Don’t ‘Name it and Claim it’
On the one hand, it is tempting to think we deserve blessings from God, claiming any pleasant promise in Scripture for ourselves. We read these passages and assume that God is promising to provide us with wealth, family, health, and a myriad of other blessings just because a verse refers to them. In reality, many of these verses are not specific promises to everyone. In some cases, they are not promises at all but general principles. This is true of most of Proverbs and many blessings in the psalms. Here are a few examples:
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers”
-Psalm 1:3, ESV
“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart”
-Psalm 37:4, ESV
“For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but whoever listens to me [wisdom] will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”
-Proverbs 1:32-33, ESV
“Long life is in her [wisdom’s] right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.”
-Proverbs 3:16-18, ESV
Other examples include Psalm 91:10 and Proverbs 12:21. All of these link righteousness and wisdom with blessings like wealth and long life, but we can all think of numerous examples where upright people suffer from poverty, disease, and early death. These verses are general statements and thus are not promises for every person. Additionally, there are promises that are for specific people, even if their subject is not immediately evident. For example, Hillsong’s “You Said” includes a line about asking God to give us the nations, but that is from Psalm 2:8, which is a promise to Jesus not us. Therefore, we cannot claim that promise since we are not Jesus. God is not some cosmic vending machine where we insert our coins of faith or good works and thus compel Him to bless us. This means that we must not view God’s blessings as somehow owed to us. If we think we deserve God’s blessings, we will be disappointed when He does not provide them, thereby causing us to question His sovereignty and goodness. However, when we realize that we sin incessantly and immediately deserve God’s eternal condemnation, we will understand that every breath is an undeserved gift of God. Then, when God takes away blessings or withholds them from us, we will not question Him but say with Job: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).
While we often avoid the temptation to openly claim God’s blessings as if we deserve them, the greater temptation lies in secret. When we lack a certain blessing or when that blessing seems imminent, we can be given to fantasizing about that blessing. In that sense, we are mentally claiming that blessing for ourselves and therefore displaying a lack of contentment with our current situation. It is certainly true that God can give us earnest desires for these blessings. It is also true that some level of imagination is often required in the godly process of discernment. But if we allow those desires to take center stage and fail to rein in our imaginations, we can easily cross into the sin of covetousness. Years ago when a friend was struggling with such thoughts about whether to pursue a romantic relationship, he came to a realization through study of Scripture that there are only two biblical was to think of women in the church: wife or sister. There is no third category of “future wife”. She was not his wife, so the only biblical way he could view her was as his sister in Christ. Later, he met and eventually married a different woman. Looking back now, he can be thankful that God withheld the blessing of the relationship in that moment and helped him be content in his situation until God eventually did give him that blessing. We need to trust both God’s provision and His timing, keeping our imaginations in check so they do not move faster than God. Whether openly or privately, we need to resist the temptation to “name and claim” God’s blessings.
Avoid the Shunamite Trap
But the other extreme is equally dangerous. Sometimes we completely shun any thought of these blessings. This often comes after experiencing the prolonged pain of yearning for these blessings but not receiving them. Years (or even decades) of disappointment at not receiving these blessings can cause even the best of us to become calloused with thick scar tissue to prevent any thought of these blessings from continuing to hurt us. This was the case of the Shunamite woman who regularly hosted Elisha. When the prophet asked what should be done for her since she took such good care of him, she deflected the question, responding with “I dwell among my own people” (2 Kings 4:13). On the outside she appeared content, but Elisha’s servant Gehazi knew better. He immediately realized, “she has no son, and her husband is old” (2 Kings 4:14). Anytime we read in the Bible of a specific woman suffering from barrenness, our ears should perk up, as what follows will include a miraculous birth. But we must remind ourselves that those in the story didn’t know that. There are relatively few of these women in Scripture (Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth, etc.), so for each of them there were thousands of women in Israel who continued in barrenness without those miraculous births. Therefore, this Shunamite woman had no reason to believe she would be any different. Assuming she and her husband were both married in their teens or twenties, this woman had suffered infertility for decades. When we consider all of the times they had tried and failed, we can relate to her desire to not relive that disappointment. So when Elisha prophesies that within a year she would have a son, her response is understandable: “No, my lord, O man of God; do not lie to your servant” (2 Kings 4:16). She had experienced the pain of dashed hopes too many times, so she wasn’t willing to let herself believe it was possible. Nevertheless, her pain was replaced with joy when she indeed did have a son within the year.
But within a few years that joy was replaced by even worse pain when the boy suddenly died. After so much pain, God had finally given her a child, only to then cause her even more pain by taking him away in a matter of hours. She couldn’t even bring herself to tell her husband the child had died, but immediately went straight to Elisha. In bitter distress, she said to Elisha, “Did I ask my lord for a son? Did I not say, ‘Do not deceive me?’” (2 Kings 4:28). She was not there to ask him to raise her son—she likely hadn’t even thought to ask. There are a total of nine resurrections recorded in Scripture—three in the Old Testament, three by Jesus, Jesus Himself, and one each by Peter and Paul—plus the mass resurrection when Jesus died (Matthew 27:52-53). But there had only been one resurrection prior to that day: Elijah raising the widow’s son. Therefore, this Shunamite woman didn’t even think to ask for a resurrection. Instead, she was expressing her pain and grief to the man who had caused it (on God’s behalf). If he had not promised her the child, she would have remained barren and thus never had her child die in her arms. Therefore, she initially would not accept God’s blessing, thinking of it as some cruel deception. While I have experienced nowhere near her level of pain and disappointment at deferred and then removed blessings, I can certainly relate to the temptation to do the opposite of “naming and claiming”. When we have earnest (and often God-given) desires that are long left unfulfilled, we can be tempted to look at every passage speaking of them as applicable to others but not to us. After years of praying for them, we simply give up and try to be content with the realization that we will never have them. But when God finally does begin to provide them, we can be like the Shunamite and try to refuse them in order to avoid the pain we have successfully suppressed, fearing that God is giving us these blessings only to cause us more pain by removing them later. This likewise causes us to question the ultimate goodness of God.
Keep Open Hands
The way to avoid both the “name it and claim it” pitfall of claiming to deserve God’s blessings and the Shunamite error of refusing them is to hold onto all of God’s promised blessings with open hands, trusting in His sovereignty and goodness. While not all promises are for all believes, some are. Paul said: “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). He also said the same to the Corinthians: “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God” (2 Corinthians 9:10-11). And Jesus said during the Sermon on the Mount that if we seek His Kingdom first, He would provide what we need (Matthew 6:33). This is a promise from God: He will provide what we need. So if God had not provided it, we don’t actually need it. If circumstances change to where we do need it, He is faithful to provide it. Because God is both omniscient and omnipotent, He both knows exactly what we need when we need it in order to accomplish His greater purpose and has the power to carry it out exactly as He plans. This leads to another universal promise for believers. God has also promised that everything will work out for the ultimate good of His saints (Romans 8:28). So everything that happens to believers—blessings and trials, times of plenty and want, showers of blessings and deserts of waiting—will ultimately end up being the best that could happen to us. Previously, I have pointed out how God refines us through trials as the master smith who knows exactly what He is doing and controls all of the variables precisely to form us exactly as He Wills for His glory and our good. One of the most important variables to control in forging is the timing of each step. Just as a master smith knows exactly how long to heat the billet in the fire, how long to shape it outside of the fire, and how many cycles of this to do before quenching it, so God knows exactly how long to expose us to each trial and withhold his blessings to prepare us for what He has for us. Remember, as I observed recently, God’s vision is much longer-term than ours. We often become myopic viewing our current situation, but God’s blessings are often multi-generational. We are all part of His story, and we will look back in glory and realize that His story is the perfect story, vastly superior than any story we could ever imagine for ourselves.
So while we should not be covetous when God withhold His blessings from us, we must also not lose hope, for Scripture makes clear that we must believe that God both exists and rewards those who earnestly seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). Here, it is important to note that the ultimate reward that He gives—the one we can be absolutely sure He will give us—is Himself. If He is withholding other blessings, perhaps those things would distract us from Him. And when He withholds blessings, He forces us to depend on Him and then make us all the more grateful if He does give them. This was certainly true of the Shunamite woman, who was one of the very few people to have not one miracle done for her but two. She joined the small handful of women who by faith received power to conceive in their old age (Hebrews 11:11) and even smaller handful of women to receive back their dead by resurrection (Hebrews 11:35). Her faith would have been unshakable after that in ways it never would have been had she not struggled with barrenness and the death of a child. So we must not “name and claim God’s promises and then doubt God’s goodness when he fails to deliver on our timeline. We must also avoid losing hope in the promises of God when He makes us wait for His blessings or withholds them entirely.
In the end, we must approach God’s blessings with open hands. We must not grasp for them when it would be sinful to do so but instead wait on His timing to provide what we need. But we must also be careful to avoid clenching our fists to resist receiving those blessings when God does provide them. Finally, when God does provide those blessings, we must hold them with an open hand. God is sovereign and good to both give and remove blessings, so we must trust that if He does remove blessings, it is ultimately for our good. We would be wise to remember the ending of the modern hymn “Christ, the Sure and Steady Anchor”: “And the calm will be the better for the storms that we endure. Christ the shore of our salvation, ever faithful, ever true. We will hold fast to the anchor, it shall never be removed.”
